Re: [xml-dev] JavaScript (was Re: [xml-dev] Whither XML ?)

[David <dlee@calldei.com>]

>> Lack of good binary support for transfer, internal use, and internal
>> storage is a huge killer for JS, IMHO.
>
> Perhaps.  However, I'm having a very difficult time getting over my 
> amusement at being told that efficient data types for binary data are 
> critically important on a list devoted to XML.
>


"Laugh while you can ... " :)
Yes I agree its amusing, but in the mobile space (which is really 
yesterdays desktop space ... and tomorrows 'your space' ) getting huge 
amounts of XML to devices is seriously painful using text protocols.

For example, in my 'day job' one of the products requires a data set of 
about 50MB of XML data.
Transferring that over say an Edge connection or even 3G in a congested 
area like San Fransisco in text is a killer (hours).
Using a binary encode compressed XML format reduces this to about 8MB 
which is still painful but under the boarder of killer.  (20-40 minutes 
instead of hours).

We were completely unable to adopt this technique to the Palm Web/OS due 
to the inability to do binary IO and efficient binary parsing.   
Fortunately both iPhone and Android allow you to go to OS level 
protocols which can do binary HTTP requetss directly and store the data 
in client-side databases which the Javascript *then* can access.


This is not "just a mobile problem" (although there are now more mobile 
browsers then desktop browsers !) ... the same problem exists in many 
places, as data sizes increase faster then networking speeds increase.

-David


-- 
David A. Lee
dlee@calldei.com
http://www.xmlsh.org